In 2022, the happiest Germans will live again in Schleswig-Holstein, which takes first place with 7.14 points. During the pandemic, the country had slipped to 6.78 points. In the previous year, Saxony-Anhalt also took first place alongside Schleswig-Holstein. The eastern German state is doing well in 2022 and comes in 9th place in the middle. Bavaria took second place in 2022, where life satisfaction increased by 0.29 points compared to the previous year to currently 7.06 points. North Rhine-Westphalia (6.98 points) is the climber of the year and is in 3rd place, closely followed by Hamburg, which is struggling to recover. Brandenburg (6.87) is in 5th place and is only one rank lower than in the previous year. It is the best-ranked East German federal state and confirms the trend that the strict separation between “the East” and “the West” is dissolving.
Hesse (6.82), Lower Saxony (6.80), Baden-Württemberg (6.80) and Saxony-Anhalt (6.79) form the middle field, all very close together in terms of the number of points. Saxony (6.68) follows at a greater distance in 10th place, followed by Rhineland-Palatinate (6.65) and Bremen (6.58), which has improved by three places to 12th place compared to the previous year. Thuringia (6.54) came last in 13th place, Berlin (6.53), Saarland (6.49) and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania (6.35), which was the only federal state to perform worse in 2022 than in the previous year (6.60), where it still ranked tenth.